Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Shantae was unable to hold my attention for long, and I settled comfortably back in to more constant companions - Overwatch and Darkest Dungeon. Last night I decided I was going to play anything but Tracer and Mercy, leaning mostly towards support, and ended up with two back-to-back PotGs on Symmetra. Very nice! Then, later with my brother, I went Zarya on Eichenwalde attack and ended up with a very nice PotG there thanks to a Sombra who ulted pefectly when I popped my Gravitron Surge on a group of four, so the D.Va who was still in her MEKA couldn't defend her team as we tore them apart.

Very nice.

Mind if I post some Darkest Dungeon spoilers? The game's titular dungeon is specacular.

Monday, December 26, 2016

This Boxing Day, for an unlimited time only! Chance's Christmas Overwatch clip show!

We begin with what was probably one of the coolest in-a-skirmish-waiting-for-a-game-to-start interactions I've ever had. I meet an enemy Genji, we make it clear that we're not gonna' kill each other, and then we develop an understanding that we will undertake a melee-only duel (which I am sure to lose, as Genjis spend a lot of time using melee, have double-jump, are used to turning around as fast as a Tracer is thanks to Swift Strike, and have fifty more hit points than I do)...

0:00 - 0:41 : ...but we are robbed of the outcome of said epic duel by Blizzard finding a goddamned game for us! Ffffuuuu..!

0:48 - 0:56 - A solid but humble Play of the Game on Hanamura. Taking out a Roadhog is, y'know, not too hot - but chasing down the Sombra who's trying to get away feels very satisfying, thank you.0:57 - 1:05 - I feel like tasking myself with killing Bastions is... poor theorycraft. A Pharah, Widow, Hanzo, Genji or Junkrat - heck, even a Soldier or Zenyatta - have a better kit for taking Bastion out. Tracer's only strengths against Bastion are her mobility, her capacity for stealth (which Genji far outstrips with his quiet footsteps and almost entirely-silent shirukens), and of course the pulse bomb, which will one-shot him.

That said, when there's a Bastion on the enemy team - like a Mercy, like an Ana or a Zen (or a Hog or a Winston or a Reinhardt), I kinda' feel like it's my job to sneak up behind him, put my barrels up against his big glowing weak spot and cut him down.

Heheheh slay bells. I love you, Tracer.

1:05 - 1:14 : Waving at a Bastion as he dies is one of my favorite pastimes. It's up there with stretching out on the couch with Darkest Dungeon. Or killing a Widowmaker. Ho ho ho.

1:29 - 1:49 : Just some solid work during which I somehow cannot die as I fling myself around the point on Lijiang. The reds have picked two of us, their Pharah pops her ult, and (thank goodness) our Roadhog pops his to blow Reaper off the point. So let's count it out,

I get the killing blow on Sym, and 72% of the credit,

Hog misses his hook on Pharah, but I get the kill and 25%,

Roadhog rolls in and I don't have time to give him an initial spray - he gets the pulse bomb which almost kills him, leaving enough health for our Hanzo to shear off for the killing blow - but I took 80% of him, and finally

the killing blow and a paltry 13% of Reaper.

And that's the round.

1:49 - 1:58 : So there's this D.Va on Hanamura. She seems mostly interested in emoting and not fighting, but when I met her on a flank right after the doors opened and we went on attack, I couldn't just leave this D.Va behind our lines. So I popped her out of her MEKA and (with our Lucio's help) killed her. Then I bumped into her again on a flank overlooking point A, and killed her again.

Then she went Winston, and came straight for me every time she saw me. I don't know why. Maybe Winston is actually a good counter to Tracer? If you land the jump (which does damage) and melee (30 damage), then you could pretty much kill me with just over one second of sustained fire from his no-aim Tesla cannon.

1:58 - 2:04 : If it's an enclosed space, you give me a pulse bomb, I'm gonna' kill your Winston. If I don't have the pulse bomb, I'll just pray I have enough blinks to get the fuck outta' there.

2:04 - 2:21 : Our allies are on the payload, and Genji and I dive on the reds to keep them pushed back as our crew advances. The Ana who dies at the beginning of this cut had just Nano boosted her Sym (which can be incredible, if the Sym is in a good position), but the Sym literally turned around and ran from us to get a health pack while Genji and I focused down the Ana.

The two of us tear into Sym and cut her down just as the red Winston lands - a decent pick for coming after Genji, at least - but now the payload is rollin' up, our Rein charges in and it's one-on three. Winston flees to the large health pack, making it very, very clear where I need to throw my pulse bomb to stick him.

2:21 - 2:31 : Originally I had a cut in here where I finish off a Junkrat on the walkway above the second point of Dorado, get hacked by a Sombra and still manage to shoot an enemy Pharah out of the air as I leap off the walkway. It was kinda' awesome.

But I dunno, man... harassing a Mercy into retreat and blinking through her to grab the health pack she's going for before I finish her off is somehow more satisfying.

"So this deliciously evil Widow is making my life tough on Hollywood attack. I'll dive through the choke to get to work, but as I do, she's always there at fifty yards to land a body shot. She was so good and aggressive I was actively avoiding her (which is weird for me). I race through the flanks, grab a health pack and as soon as I peek out, bam, she's there to body or headshot me. But I'm still in there behind enemy lines, doing good Tracer work. I'm buzzing their backline and pulling their Hog away, and surviving for minutes on end, just being a pest and waiting for my team to push. And when they do...

Genji pulls his sword and goes for the Hog right after one of my harassing sprays. Our attack Symmetra dives after him, he and Torb go down and their defense Symmetra throws her projected barrier up to protect Torb's turret and her allies in the little hallway to the health pack on the right. I blink into her and finish off the turret, turning around as our Rein drops the hammer, stunning Sym. I finish her off on the ground just before their Zen pops Transcendence, and spin into the hallway to find two figures on the ground, still stunned from Rein's hammer. I blindly drop my pulse bomb just as their ulting Zen swoops in to save the day and can do nothing when the bomb goes off and takes Widow and McCree.

Zen flees back to the point, my whole team dives on him, and I get the killing blow and 72 fire. We take the point."

And finally... y'know what it's like, playing Tracer after the Symmetra buff?

Saturday, December 24, 2016

So this deliciously evil Widow is making my life tough on Hollywood attack. I'll dive through the choke to get to work, but as I do, she's always there at fifty yards to land a body shot. She was so good and aggressive I was actively avoiding her (which is weird for me). I race through the flanks, grab a health pack and as soon as I peek out, bam, she's there to body or headshot me. But I'm still in there behind enemy lines, doing good Tracer work. I'm buzzing their backline and pulling their Hog away, and surviving for minutes on end, just being a pest and waiting for my team to push. And when they do...

Genji pulls his sword and goes for the Hog right after one of my harassing sprays. Our attack Symmetra dives after him, he and Torb go down and their defense Symmetra throws her projected barrier up to protect Torb's turret and her allies in the little hallway to the health pack on the right. I blink into her and finish off the turret, turning around as our Rein drops the hammer, stunning Sym. I finish her off on the ground just before their Zen pops Transcendence, and spin into the hallway to find two figures on the ground, still stunned from Rein's hammer. I blindly drop my pulse bomb just as their ulting Zen swoops in to save the day and can do nothing when the bomb goes off and takes Widow and McCree.

Zen flees back to the point, my whole team dives on him, and I get the killing blow and 72 fire. We take the point.

We lost the match. But PotG was...

And I post it to the Penny Arcade forums and DasUberEdward says

Which is honestly huge to me, right now. I thought the Young Love video was pretty awesome, but I got like zero reaction to it, which had me questioning the whole making-vidoes thing. Plus life sucks in like fifteen different directions, at the moment, so just having someone say "you did a good thing" is... well, it's very valuable, to me.

Thank you, DasUberEdward ^.^

I'm hoping to have a Christmas clip show up this weekend. I have successfully earned a PotG with every (good) Tracer highlight intro (that is, all of them except the Summer event one), and I'm hoping I'll have time to work on it tonight or tomorrow (I probably won't, but it's good to hope).

CHANCE...

...is actually named David.

This is where I write about video games. Beyond the simple pleasure of it, I hope to use this place as a bit of a mental gym to re-develop my writing style - something I seem to have misplaced around the turn of the century.

It will also serve as a personal blog, but for the most part if you enjoy discussion of gaming news, independent reviews and pointless musings, you have come to precisely the right place.

It's my custom to do at least one post per day - but whether it ends up being ten posts of breaking news and a review, or one post complaining about how I have a tummy ache is not set in stone.